June, 2010

Blog - About

About Eric Nelson - Development for .NET Framework for ISVs

I have been in Microsoft <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place> for getting on for 12 years now - and have spent most of that time working with UK Independent Software Vendors to help them explore and adopt the latest technologies and tools from Microsoft. Along the way I have made some good friends, met some very smart people, shared very late nights in labs and lived through a variety of development technologies from the Alpha of Active Server Pages 1.0 to the betas of Microsoft Transaction Server and more recently the betas ofthe Microsoft .NET Framework– IMHO the best technology I have worked on – period! For the last two years my focus has been on working with ISVs on the betas of SQL Server 2005 and in 2006 this focus switched to Windows Vista and WinFX. Oh - and in case you were wondering - before joining Microsoft I was a Unix developer working exclusively in C and 4GLs writing high performance calculation engines or delivering RDBMS built on top of Sybase, Ingres and others.

Outside of work I spend most of my time with my wife, two kids, the family dog Snoop (affectionately known as "Scud" for his ability to charge into and take out any visitor to the house) and the infestation of rats that infest the old forge next door. My vice is late night gaming sessions with a great bunch of online buddies I have built up over the years from all parts of the globe - so say hi if you see "erky" or "erknel" if you share this vice - it could well be me!

So why have I created this blog? More importantly why should you read this blog? My aim is simple - to allow me to share a stream of hopefully useful thoughts and finds with the folks I spend most of my waking hours with - namely developers in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region> working within ISVs to build great solutions using our latest technologies.You may also find the occasional post on my after 10pm hobby - online gaming - just skip those :-)

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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A couple of weeks back I was at Web Directions manning a stand showing off Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 2 (check out a post I did at the time including videos to watch on IE9...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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This question has come up a lot in recent weeks as early adopters move from prototyping with the platform to actually needing to deliver real applications. Whilst fundamentally you...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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On Monday (21st June) we had our last Live Meeting for the 6 weeks of Windows Azure training virtual training we have been running out of Microsoft UK. Monday pretty much hit the mark...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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A new community has popped onto my radar, created and delivered by James Burns, a top chap I have known for many, many years. The aim of the community is to foster dialogue between...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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One of the “warts” on Windows Azure development has been that once your application was deployed to the cloud, if things went wrong it was pretty tough to figure out the root problem...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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WordPress is enormously popular for blogs and full websites thanks to an awesome eco system which has built up around it, the simplicity (relatively) of getting it up and running plus...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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This is (almost) a straight copy and paste but represents an important announcement worthy of a little more “exposure” :-) Starting August 1, 2010, we will release a new SQL Azure Development...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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Like many others signed up to the Windows Azure Platform, I received an email overnight detailing the upcoming database size changes for SQL Azure. I know from our work with early adopters...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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I’m very pleased to report I have managed to slip past the quality police and get to speak for the third year in a row at the excellent Software Architect conference in London. Which...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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At Web Directions last week in London (10th and 11th June 2010) I promised several folks I would put up a blog post to more information on IE 9. True to my word (albeit a little later...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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Short answer: Don’t! Just kidding :-) Long answer: I believe it is the same process as for other Microsoft Online Services – but I have never tried it. Hence please post a comment if...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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I previously mentioned I was working on a community authored eBook for the Windows Azure Platform. Well, today I assembled the 20 articles that made it through to the end of the review...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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On Monday at Tech▪Ed 2010 we announced new stuff (I like new stuff) that “showcases our continued commitment to deliver value, flexibility and control of data through data cloud services...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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short answer : Quite probably, as SQL Azure is very similar to SQL Server longer answer: Object Relational Mappers (ORMs) that work with SQL Server are likely but not guaranteed to...

Note: Cross posted from IUpdateable from Eric Nelson .
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Mark Juras of GreatMigrations.com kindly sent me an article on gmStudio which I have posted on my old VB focused goto100 site. gmStudio is a programmable VB6/ASP/COM re-engineering...